domingo, 28 de abril de 2013

Tani you are my sweet little angel, you were such a goofy, silly little puppy that became part of my life, you will always be in my heart. You changed me for the better and now your little gentle spirit is wandering forever in the woods that you loved so much to sniff and explore.

lunes, 15 de abril de 2013

My name is Alina Rudya and
I'm 28 years old. When I was a baby, my father, who was 27, worked as
an engineer at the Chernobyl Nuclear plant and we lived in the satellite
town of Pripyat/Prypyat. After the nuclear catastrophe on the 26th
April 1986 we were evacuated from the town and never returned (until
recently, for my project). I currently live in Berlin, Germany and I am a
photographer. In 2011 and 2012 I returned to Pripyat, to complete a
photo project about my abandoned hometown from a subjective perspective.Proof is on my website http://www.alinarudya.com.
Under the project named Prypyat mon Amour, you can find my
self-portraits, which I took in my old apartment on Lenin str.17 and
surroundings of a Ukrainian abandoned ghost-town Pripyat. You can also
see a picture of me and my mom, lying on the floor of the apartment. My
father, who worked at Chernobyl all his life (he died from cancer in
2006) put it their 15 years ago as a memory.
Here is also a picture of me and my father from 1985, collaged with a
2012 shot of my old Pripyat apartment.
http://imgur.com/gallery/3kCoEYH

miércoles, 10 de abril de 2013

(Above: The 15-year-old “Llullaillaco Maiden” was sacrificed
along with two other children on top of Mt. Llullaillco, in northern
Argentina, at 22,000 feet)In Argentina, A Museum Unveils A Long-Frozen Maiden

September 11, 2007NYTSALTA, Argentina — The maiden, the boy, the girl of lightning: they
were three Inca children, entombed on a bleak and frigid mountaintop 500
years ago as a religious sacrifice…Unearthed in 1999 from the 22,000-foot
summit of Mount Llullaillaco, a volcano 300 miles west of here near the
Chilean border, their frozen bodies were among the best preserved
mummies ever found, with internal organs intact, blood still present in
the heart and lungs, and skin and facial features mostly unscathed. No
special effort had been made to preserve them. The cold and the dry,
thin air did all the work. They froze to death as they slept, and 500
years later still looked like sleeping children, not mummies.

In the eight years since their discovery, the mummies, known here simply as Los Niños
or “the children,” have been photographed, X-rayed, CT scanned and
biopsied for DNA. The cloth, pottery and figurines buried with them have
been meticulously thawed and preserved. But the bodies themselves were
kept in freezers and never shown to the public — until last week, when La Doncella,
the maiden, a 15-year-old girl, was exhibited for the first time, at
the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology, which was created in Salta
expressly to display them.The new and the old are at home in Salta. The museum faces a historic
plaza where a mirrored bank reflects a century-old basilica with a sign
warning churchgoers not to use the holy water for witchcraft. Now a
city of 500,000 and the provincial capital, Salta was part of the Inca
empire until the 1500s, when it was invaded by the Spanish
conquistadors.Although the mummies captured headlines when they were found,
officials here decided to open the exhibit quietly, without any of the
fanfare or celebration that might have been expected.“These are dead people, Indian people,” said Gabriel E. Miremont, 39,
the museum’s designer and director. “It’s not a situation for a party.”The two other mummies have not yet been shown, but will be put on display within the next six months or so.The children were sacrificed as part of a religious ritual, known as
capacocha. They walked hundreds of miles to and from ceremonies in Cuzco
and were then taken to the summit of Llullaillaco (yoo-yeye-YAH-co),
given chicha (maize beer), and, once they were asleep, placed in
underground niches, where they froze to death. Only beautiful, healthy,
physically perfect children were sacrificed, and it was an honor to be
chosen. According to Inca beliefs, the children did not die, but joined
their ancestors and watched over their villages from the mountaintops
like angels.Discussing why it took eight years to prepare the exhibit, Dr.
Miremont smiled and said, “This is South America,” but then went on to
explain that there was little precedent for dealing with mummies as well
preserved as these, and that it took an enormous amount of research to
figure out how to show them yet still make sure they did not
deteriorate.The solution turned out to be a case within a case — an acrylic
cylinder inside a box made of triple-paned glass. A computerized climate
control system replicates mountaintop conditions inside the case — low
oxygen, humidity and pressure, and a temperature of 0 degrees
Fahrenheit. In part because Salta is in an earthquake zone, the museum
has three backup generators and freezers, in case of power failures or
equipment breakdowns, and the provincial governor’s airplane will fly
the mummies out in an emergency, Dr. Miremont said.Asked where they would be taken, he replied, “Anywhere we can plug them in.”The room holding La Doncella is dimly lighted, and the case itself is dark; visitors must turn on a light to see her.“This was important for us,” Dr. Miremont said. “If you don’t want to
see a dead body, don’t press the button. It’s your decision. You can
still see the other parts of the exhibit.”He designed the lighting partly in hope of avoiding further offense
to people who find it disturbing that the children, part of a religious
ritual, were taken from the mountaintop shrine.Whatever the intention, the effect is stunning. Late in August, before the exhibit opened, Dr. Miremont showed visitors La Doncella.
At a touch of the button, she seemed to materialize from the darkness,
sitting cross-legged in her brown dress and striped sandals, bits of
coca leaf still clinging to her upper lip, her long hair woven into many
fine braids, a crease in one cheek where it leaned against her shawl as
she slept.

The bodies seemed so much like sleeping children that working with
them felt “almost more like a kidnapping than archaeological work,” Dr.
Miremont said.One of the children, a 6-year-old girl, had been struck by lightning
sometime after she died, resulting in burns on her face, upper body and
clothing. She and the boy, who was 7, had slightly elongated skulls,
created deliberately by head wrappings — a sign of high social status,
possibly even royalty.Scientists worked with the bodies in a special laboratory where the
temperature of the entire lab could be dropped to 0 degrees Fahrenheit,
and the mummies were never exposed to higher temperatures for more than
20 minutes at a time, to preventing thawing.DNA tests revealed that the children were unrelated, and CT scans
showed that they were well nourished and had no broken bones or other
injuries. La Doncella apparently had sinusitis, as well as a lung
condition called bronchiolitis obliterans, possibly the result of an
infection.“There are two sides,” Dr. Miremont said. “The scientific — we can
read the past from the mummies and the objects. The other side says
these people came from a culture still alive, and a holy place on the
mountain.”Some regard the exhibit as they would a church, Dr. Miremont said.“To me, it’s a museum, not a holy place,” he said. “The holy place is on top of the mountain.”The mountains around Salta are home to at least 40 other burial sites
from ritual sacrifices, but Dr. Miremont said the native people who
live in those regions do not want more bodies taken away.“We will respect their wishes,” Dr. Miremont said, adding that three
mummies were enough. “It is not necessary to break any more graves. We
would like to have good relations with the Indian people.”

martes, 9 de abril de 2013

For 70 years the Parisian apartment had been left
uninhabited, under lock and key, the rent faithfully paid but no hint
of what was inside.

By Henry Samuel in Paris
Published: 7:49PM, 04 Oct 2010 Images: Getty

Mrs de Florian, a ‘demimondaine’ never returned to her Paris flat after the war and died at the age of 91 in 2010.

Behind the door, under a thick layer of dusk lay a treasure trove of
turn-of-the-century objects including a painting by the 19th century
Italian artist Giovanni Boldini.

The woman who owned the flat had left for the south of France before the Second World War and never returned.

But when she died recently aged 91, experts were tasked with drawing
up an inventory of her possessions and homed in on the flat near the
Trinité church in Paris between the Pigalle red light district and
Opera.Entering the untouched, cobweb-filled flat in Paris’ 9th
arrondissement, one expert said it was like stumbling into the castle
of Sleeping Beauty, where time had stood still since 1900.“There was a smell of old dust,” said Olivier Choppin-Janvry, who
made the discovery. Walking under high wooden ceilings, past an old wood
stove and stone sink in the kitchen, he spotted a stuffed ostrich
and a Mickey Mouse toy dating from before the war, as well as an
exquisite dressing table.But he said his heart missed a beat when he caught sight of a stunning tableau of a woman in a pink muslin evening dress.The painting was by Boldini and the subject a beautiful Frenchwoman
who turned out to be the artist’s former muse and whose granddaughter
it was who had left the flat uninhabited for more than half a
century.Giovanni BoldiniThe muse was Marthe de Florian, an actress with a long list of ardent
admirers, whose fervent love letters she kept wrapped neatly in
ribbon and were still on the premises. Among the admirers was the
72nd prime minister of France, George Clemenceau, but also Boldini.The expert had a hunch the painting was by Boldini, but could find no
record of the painting. “No reference book dedicated to Boldini
mentioned the tableau, which was never exhibited,” said Marc Ottavi,
the art specialist he consulted about the work.When Mr Choppin-Janvry found a visiting card with a scribbled love
note from Boldini, he knew he had struck gold. “We had the link and I
was sure at that moment that it was indeed a very fine Boldini”.He finally found a reference to the work in a book by the artist’s
widow, which said it was painted in 1898 when Miss de Florian was 24.The starting price for the painting was €300,000 but it rocketed as
ten bidders vyed for the historic work. Finally it went under the
hammer for €2.1 million, a world record for the artist.“It was a magic moment. One could see that the buyer loved the painting; he paid the price of passion,” said Mr Ottavi.